Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Why The Hardball Times Sucks. Pt. 1

The Hardball Times is the infrared to Joe Morgan's ultraviolet: two who-gives-a-shit invisible wavelengths on opposite sides of the relevant spectrum of baseball commentary that no one should be forced to acknowledge until they really fuck something up. Here's the deal: while Joe Morgan does, indeed, deserve to be called out for all the head-scratchingly retarded shit he mouth-deficates all over his television broadcasts, that doesn't at all mean that we have to applaud (or even condone) the works of extreme overcompensation ejaculated unto the internet by the crowd of twice-divorced DeVry University graduates with TI-83's for dicks over at The Hardball Times.

An analogy: Billy Beane, Michael Lewis, and all the other major players involved in popularizing the "Moneyball" -style sabermetric approach to front-office baseball management are the dude's that invented the guitar. First Joe Morgan goes out and start some vapid piece-of-shit band like 30 Seconds to Mars, or Fallout Boy, or any other mascara-wearing fucktroup of 30 year-old men that sing to 16-year-olds about how fucking sweet it is to drive hybrid cars and get forearm tattoos and shit. And Billy's all like "Nawh, brah. You wrote that shit on a $15 Casio and friendster took a dump on your lyrics. This is a guitar. (presents guitar) Its got chords and scales, and fairly objective, quantifiable measures of music theory and craftsmanship. It will allow you to at least plant the flowers of melody in your pile of emo-as-fuck lyric feces " Joe Morgan ignores him. Keeps going. And makes millions.

Meanwhile Chris Jaffe, Sal Baxamusa, and the rest of the calculator-scrotumed douche bags over at The Hardball Times recognize Morgan's ignorance and begin working on what they believe is a heady, intellectual response to the trite and hollow oozings of the Joe Morgan/Fallout Boy's fuck-you-mom-and-dad emo catastrophe. They want something more. Something, smart, intelligent, skilled. Something with hour-long, behind-the-back, six-necked, rip-dick guitar solos. So they start some shitty band like Dream Theater that shreds its way to notoriety with a 10-album (9-song) dump of a discography that in its 740 minutes of playback time lacks a single true melody. Billy approaches the group. "You guys just took it too far. I mean OBP's OK, but WxROP... Jesus you missed the point." The Hardball Times didn't hear him on account of the shredding.

Look, I'm not at all trying to defend Joe Morgan. If I had 5 free certificates that I could redeem for acquittal on all broom sodomy charges I'd likely spend one on Joe Morgan....

17 comments:

you sure you're not intending to pick on firejoemorgan.com? either way, you're clearly displaying for all to see your complete lack of understanding of what objective, scientific research is... DeVry's a great school... guess you couldn't get in ;)

tingler-I read ya. Don't let the commenters get you down, anyone who calls someone "not terribly bright" after reading a blog post is...well, not open-minded anyway. I read this and see your points. Sabermetrics have deconstructed the game to a point at which its study no longer resembles a game.

But I think both camps here are missing the greater point: Studying sabermetrics is a hobby, and it pairs well with watching baseball, which is a different hobby altogether. And they don't have to be exclusive, so just let each be. Neither is the same as playing baseball - which is what Joe Morgan talks about in his commentary, and which is what most casual fans like to hear. Believe it or not, sabermetricians, not everyone is an engineering student like me who loves stats, and sabermetrics are not the game that became America's pastime.

Lot of fun and interesting stuff on THT, but certain articles are flat-out quantitative onanism(See: "You, too can be a scout" and scroll about halfway down.) Just cause I slept through precalc in High School doesn't mean I don't know baseball.

Wow. I'm pretty sure that unlike the rest of the blogs on blogger, this won't rapidly descend into the unread, pointless, and infrequently updated ramblings of someone without a point. JK. It will.

Unless, of course, you start really awesome discussions of whether baseball will ever produce facial hair as cool as Rod Beck's. In which case, I will become a huge fan of Cool Ball. Discussions of uniforms would also be cool. And stadiums! Which stadiums are rad? Which are gay (in the fifth grade sense of the term)?

If you're going to get into broom handle sodomy, hygiene is a must. Always use a condom. If you and your victim/partner should choose not to use a condom, make sure to use any given broom handle on only one person. Do not share broom handles! There is no effective way to sanitize a broom handle in between loveplowings.